My take on the WordPress vs Blogger thing

There is a debate {continued at Blogopolis but ongoing since the dawn of time}. The WordPress Vs Blogger thing. The whole idea from my way of thinking is to claim ownership of your blog and the interlectual property that is on it. That you, rather than blogger control it. It is an ownership thing and a gadget thing. Now having not delved into the gadget thing, I’m talking about the ownership side.

Now me, being the nerdy type. I have both. Of course.

I have a WordPress site tucked securely behind this one, duplicating my RSS feed but it redirects traffic to here. To my Blogger home. The blogspot.com address. That WordPress site is self hosted, I pay for domain registration, hosting and manage all that comes with that. I could use it. As in I have the skills to use it. I chose not to.

I love blogger. The simplicity of it. The ease of use. And maybe, if I want my blog to continue to grow {and I kinda do, hello, I would’ve nearly took out my own Nan to go to Blogher this week just gone}. But the thing I heard from the speakers at Blogopolis is that it is important to own your domain and self host should I ever want to retire and sell my blog.

Now I don’t know about your opinions on this, but mine is that a personal blog isn’t really salable. It’s not like someone else could come in and continue to write it. For one, most people spell a heck of a lot better then I do. And let’s not even start on the grammar… I get that there are blogs that are salable. Something like We Heart Life or Hello Blogger Events for example could be salable. Mine, in its current format, is not.

So I figure this blog can live on Blogger for as long as I like. If I was to create a salable blog, then I would use self hosted of some variety, probably WordPress, but maybe something else. If I wanted to sell it, then of course I would need to own it first. This is common sense. But do bloggers, life bloggers, personal bloggers, really NEED to own their domain or to self host?

I’m thinking not.

So there you go. My two cents on domain purchasing and the WordPress vs. Blogger debate. I think I’ve solved it, you can all stop talking about it now. Don’t you think. Haha. Who am I kidding, this will just be another thing for us all to debate over.

Not part of the debate, because seriously – how does it affect me what other people use? But a different perspective. I used Blogger for 2 years and hated it. As soon as I found out about WordPress I fell in love, and that was on the hosted site without the plugins etc. At last, something that was logical and easy and actually did what I wanted it to! Personally, I found the back end of blogger frustrating. Obviously this isn't a common experience, although I have heard a couple of others saying the same. So it might be more to do with the way you already think or work, rather than a straight 'blogger is simpler.' For people who are finding either one a bit of a chore, maybe trying the other platform is a good idea to see if it works better *for you.*

Lauren

Ahhh! Thankyou for putting into words what I couldn't get out of my brain! Totally agree with you that as a 'personal blogger' (not sure if I'm keen on that term, think I need to create a new title…what do you think) I can't see myself a) selling or b) anyone purchasing my blog anytime soon so I'm going to stay put on blogger for now.Although I might buy my domain name, mostly because I want to change the blog web address and plus I think I would feel totes cool :)xx

I agree with you 100% (even though I am a Blogger traitor and now use WP on my personal blog).Nothing at all wrong with Blogger!You can make backups of your posts every day if you wish – google never claim to own your content – no probs there! Of course you are at the mercy of Google servers behaving themselves HOWEVER I honestly believe WP has more problems there and the requirement for updates is pressing and not updating can cause security risks and sometimes because plugins to have errors. If you don't back your content up: you can lose it. You can get hacked (pretty common from what I have seen), it's expensive.Nothing wrong with Blogger!

Thank you everyone for commenting! It's such a funny thing. It is, after all, a preference. And when/if I ever use my WordPress blog full time, I would hope that it wouldn't impact anything that makes this blog what it is. And I think buy the domain if you want it. What is it, like $10 per year through Google. EASY.

Since I write about my life and my opinions I don't think anyone would ever want to buy my blog…I used Blogger in the beginning because it was the only one I knew of. I'm not very tech savvy so it works fine for me. And the reason I don't change is simple. Lazy.

Reminds me a little of all the debate that went on about which camera to use when I was a photographic student. It matters not, what counts is the "eye" and the emotions behind the images….same for blogging. ciao for nowLisa

I'm a bit of both too (two on Blogger, one with its own domain; two self-hosted on WordPress) but I actually love Blogger now. Am not a tech-head so it's heaps easier for me. But I have a question, now that it's so easy to host a Blogger blog on your own domain (that $10 a year deal sure is pretty easy) does it really matter what machine is behind your blog? Do you think it affects page rank or anything? I've been wondering …

Mr Lonely

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Maxabella

All I have to really say about this topic is FFS. Seriously? 99.9% of the blogs out there are fabulicious funster blogs that I just adore but are really just a person on a page. Not saleable. Why would they want to be? I don't get that about this blogging caper at all. Why can't we just bloody well write and converse and get on with it? x

All very good points – Rhonda, Lisa and Amanda. I will have to take a look into the stats thing Amanda, but I don't think it does. The impact would be if you are with blogspot and move to a .com as Google hates a redirect link… But if the traffic is coming to you anyway {your blogspot ac}… Well, I'm not sure that it would make much difference.

You know me, a blogger girl. I bought my domain name through blogger too. Cheap and easy :)I don't get the debate though, there is a choice, shouldn't we be appreciative of that? If everyone used or liked just one it would be boring!